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Socks for the Distinguished Gentleman

Right after knitting the Man Thing hat for my uncle in 2012, my Grandma told me he had talked about needing socks because he always had cold feet in the evening. My Grandma always had the best timing with these things. However, I made a mental note to remember this for the next birthday and holidays season, so now my uncle is in the possession of two brandnew pairs of socks!

I only managed to snap a quick picture of the first pair, as I was in the middle of writing my BA thesis at that time and felt quite stressed. Unfortunately that means the colours are all sorts of wrong – it’s actually a very subdued, dark blue (for the distinguished gentleman with very cold feet!). I followed the Taylor’s Orange Toe-Up Socks pattern faithfully, besides only using one colour instead of two since I felt my uncle wouldn’t approve of this two-coloured nonsense. His feet are a EU size 42, so I knitted 21cm for the foot and 17cm for the leg. (Which I knew from the top of my head, of course, because I’m just that good. In no way did I call my Dad several times a day asking him to measure his foot again because I had already forgotten the measurements he had taken last time.)

For the second pair I initially had black socks in mind, but then went with grey because seriously. Have you ever knitted with black? It’s a recipe for eyestrain. I used Taylor’s Orange Toe-Up Socks as a basis again, but exchanged the 2×2 ribbing for a moss stitch pattern. This resulted in a completely different materiality and texture, very thick and very warm, I’m sure not even I of the perennialy freezing feet would get cold with these socks; it also used up a lot more yarn than the other pair. (That’ll probably be obvious to the experienced knitter, but I’m still in an experimental stage.) The foot is 21cm as well, but for the leg I just knitted 10cm plus 8 rows of 2×2 ribbing because I was running out of yarn.

The pictures are courtesy of my long-suffering Dad, who with a sigh agreed to model the socks. Thanks Dad! You know I love you even though I keep annoying you with these things! I’m very pleased with the grey socks, more so than with the blue ones. I think I just don’t like plain ribbed socks all that much. I also seem to have really come to love grey in general, who would have thought?